One of the conclusions I’ve drawn while I’ve been rubbish at everything and jumping from job to job like a demented frog is that I’m my own worst enemy. I have real problems – my self esteem sucks, I’m not as patient or as kind as I used to be, I’m *always* unwell. I carry toxic “secrets” (mostly about how little I’m coping) around with me like they were good baggage – I’m the mother of two teens and yet sometimes I barely feel old enough to be their friends, let alone their mother.

My money sense sucks – I’m always depressed. I rarely smile. I used to be proud of our little house and would make the effort to keep it clean, but that’s even backslid lately. I have a dream job which makes me feel like I’m REALLY not worthy of it. My todo list is horrible – it’s got stuff on there that I wrote down weeks ago (in my defence, if there is one, I got really sick, and couldn’t do the work, and my clients are ok with that – I’m NOT). I often look at my partner and when he tells me he loves me, I call him a liar. There’s something *really* wrong with all of this.

I don’t know if it’s because I have a mental health problem (bipolar disorder), if my self-esteem issues are rearing their ugly head again, or if it’s the fact that we can’t get and stay pregnant, but something deep inside me is damaged. I suspect it’s ‘all of the above’.

For the longest time, my friends have been telling me I’m my own worst enemy. And I’d laugh it off and blitz from task to task and get an inordinate amount done, but I’d forget things, or I’d miss commitments that I shouldn’t, or I’d gloss over the rapid approach of deadlines and kid myself that I can do it…tomorrow. Always tomorrow. And then tomorrow would be Friday, and it’d be the weekend and everything that I’d planned to do would be undone. And then I’d start again next week. And get sick, and land in hospital or in bed, and then lose more time.
I sleep most of the day too – something I hate to admit, but actually, everyone’s now used to. I don’t go to sleep until really late, and don’t get up until even later, and half my day is gone, before I even get started. And I know a lot of it is depression, and the rest of it is upping my dose of Seroquel because of said depression, but I miss being able to write, and I miss my blogs, and I’m hit and miss for just about anything, and that really *really* sucks.

I wasn’t raised badly – I was never abused by my parents. My family loved me. My mother and uncle, and later, my stepfather did everything they could to make our lives comfortable and complete. I did go through a really rough time at school and was bullied badly enough to warrant, possibly, a word with the LEA about their part in my problems now (though, where to start and how to even say it), but the fact of the matter is, there’s a faulty switch or six in my head that tells me what’s enough, what’s achievable, and what’s comfortable for me. And that faulty switch seems also to be messing with my sleep again.

I know, in my gut, it’s to do with this ‘secondary infertility’ that my partner and I are dealing with. I know in my gut, it’s what’s not letting me just hit publish on projects and start new cover reveals and do the go round again. I also know some of it is because I’m being bullied online again and that makes the ugliness of my teen years rear it’s head over and over. I probably need to deal with that too.

I know in my heart that I feel empty and still feel like I’ve failed over something that’s medically uncontrollable so far. I know I feel empty and lost because I thought, by now, I’d be caring for a baby again. My world feels wrong and off kilter *constantly*. I probably need to go for counselling, but that feels like admitting we’re never going to get there. And I *hate* that. I hate it so much that I can’t breathe.

Things are slowly getting better, or at least, aren’t getting any worse. We’re slowly coming to terms with the idea we need a bit of help extending our family, and I’ve embarked on a new daily exercise plan with the help of an app on my Kindle (I exercise for 20 – 30 mins every day – when the weather is a bit nicer, I’m also going to start running again), and I’m trying to control my intake of cola and stuff (which I think is the main reason I’m struggling with weight loss. I guess it doesn’t help when I’m under my calorie intake/at my intake, but still getting FAR too much sugar. And please, don’t lecture me about empty calories – I know. The problem is, I’m on meds that make me constantly want to eat, and crave sugar, and it’s really difficult. I’ve done periods of not drinking Coke, but it’s difficult. And trust me, telling me I need more willpower isn’t helpful either – I’m taking it one step and one day at a time, but it’s still tough.

Seroquel and appetite

Anyone that takes atypical medication (or are on meds for their on label reasons) probably know this one, but short of taking things like Chromium and other supplements, one of the things I do know seroquel messes with is my appetite. I never used to want to eat at three in the morning, but sure enough, I’m fighting that right now. And we try to keep healthy snacks in the house, but seriously, path of least resistance, headache staving off and more generally works with cola. I need to retrain myself and I’m working on that, but to be honest, I’m sat right now with a glass of Cherry Coke. It’s maddening. I am trying right now to cut it down to two glasses a day – from tomorrow, it’ll be mornings only, with food, and small glasses. Next week, one glass. Eventually, on the weekends, if at all. I tried cold turkey, and it’s just not doable. I have a bad day and I go running back to drinking it, to get rid of one ache.

Books, writing and more

Books and writing are going slowly. I’m trying to keep up with doing at least 750 words a day, as you can see over at Stateofthewriting. It’s not the easiest thing in the world – I’ve found lately that I’ve put it off until the end of the day. I’m also trying to ‘front load’ blog writing to the beginning of the week and other writing once I’ve finished that, to see if it helps.

No books published in the last month, though I am republishing some short stories in a small anthology soon

Other stuff

I’m getting ready to launch or relaunch lots of stuff, that I’m setting up while I’m not in a full-time job. Watch this space!

I guess I’m going to get some funny looks for this post, but writing is an adorable, yet endless grind. I’ve been arguing with people today about it today, but we grow, and we learn. And writing is both pleasure and pain, or at least for me. And I’m still stretching my muscles and wearing them in again.

I set myself a goal of 100,000 words this year, and I’m already a fifth of the way there, just blogging, doing 750words.com and a tiny bit of fiction. I want the fiction to be much more of an element in it, but seriously, it’s easy to write 100,000 words, just by blogging and doing 750words.com. I may need a bigger goal!

In the interim though, I thought I’d introduce my new readers to a few things that they might have missed:

We (Kriss and I) are sorting out some other stuff to launch too – a horror blog and a couple of other things besides.

But yeah, that’s where we are right now. I’m back to looking for a job, which is really fun, and really tiring. We’ve temporarily stopped trying for a baby, while I settle into everything. We’re coming up with new and interesting ways to amuse the now not so kitten-sized kittens. Life is as it is.

I’ve been pretty much at a dead stop since…well, before Kushie died, but since the beginning of the year. And I know why – finally facing the fact that we’re probably dealing with secondary infertility, when previously, getting pregnant and having kids was one of the few things I had on my ‘I’m good at this list’ was really tough. I’ve had to process a lot of anger – anger at him for making us wait this long. Anger at myself for being angry at him, for letting him down, for not getting my life together in a way that would have let us have a baby earlier. About how unfair it all is, in general.
And let’s face it – life hasn’t been exactly fair or nice for the last year few years or so.

The difference between wallowing and productivity

See, the thing is, i haven’t been at a complete stop. I’m still outlining novels, and I’m still working full-time , most recently, out of the house. I’m just not writing, and that’s not fair in many ways. It’s difficult to say WHEN things changed, because I know I wasn’t writing before all of this happened – well…again that’s not true. I know what stopped me writing – it was mostly copywriting full-time that did it. And then, being burned out just a little bit, ring that tiny bit more tired than I cared to admit… and then? It just got easier to stay still and ignore my books. And easier. And easier. And I know it’s stupid because some books are finished – all it takes is a bit of a push and they’re on their way, in the world. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to release books till I have my foundations right again.
The personal brand and rebrand is going to take, at a guess a year. And it’s not a lot of changes really – it’s just going to be a bit long and drawn out. I’ve got another project to worry about too – two really. One is a sekret-squirell experiment, and the other is PR. As I’ve seen, more and more, I’m spending time on The Finishing Fairies, and working with companies to see if I can’t help them with their PR and SEO needs.

But I’m still going to write. It might not be as much as I thought my world would contain, but I get to choose. I get to rebrand. I’m free to do so.

It was 2001. November 2001, just after they’d decided that I’d damaged my pancreas with a few missed gallstones. I’d spent a month in and out of hospital, unable to eat, unable to deal with most of the pain that had consumed me. I dropped from a svelte mother of two who had been merrily breastfeeding and healthily curvy (12 stones or so) to 8 stones and skeletal. I went from breastfeeding to not and still producing milk, even though I wasn’t feeding. The doctors and nurses looking after me watched me sleep most of the day away, full of morphine and on drips, barely eating. At one point, they spoke of putting in a central line.

I got home and got pregnant again. It was stupid, but still a miracle. It was 2001 – my baby daughter was six months old, my son was just over two years old. By my birthday, after arguing and discussing and going through all of the options, we decided we could manage with a third child, as long as my body would let me. That was a question in and of itself – one that we finally got to the bottom of. I’d be ok, as long as I was careful.

And then, the worst happened. My blood tests showed that actually, I might not be ok. That my liver and my pancreas were struggling – and my relationship was breaking down and things just weren’t working. I’d been making plans by that point to go it alone with the three of my children, as their father was…not whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Our relationship had gone south long before I’d gotten pregnant again, but I thought I could cope.

I was then faced with the worst decision I could ever make. I could die carrying this child. And it’s something I don’t talk about much – there’s the more immediate ‘trying for this family’ always to deal with, but this was different. I really was on my own in many ways.
So, we went to talk about my options, and discovered the little boy I was carrying was dead.
By then, though, he had a name.
His name was Connor. He’d have been born around August 2002, and would be 11 now.

I have a godson, not much younger than my Connor would have been, and I left the father of my children a year after. We’d grown apart by then. And my life moved on. It always does. I don’t think the things that came after would have happened with three children as young as they were, and I know that losing him was the fork in the path that led me, perhaps, to where I am now. And logic suggests that we’ll never know – you can’t go back and change it. You can’t remove a scar – not easily. And there are some we just don’t want to remove.

But around now, every year, I miss the little boy I didn’t really get to know. We talk about stillbirth and miscarriages in hushed tones, and though I know it’s not the same as losing him at 30 weeks, or earlier or later, he still had a name, and I had hopes for him. He has no grave, but he has a tree in the place I spent some of my teen years. There is no marker, nor other people to remember him, aside from the people that lived it with me, thousands of miles away. And those that got to know me after, while I was still dealing with all of it. But I was the only one that knew him really. I wish, more than anything else, that everything I’d hoped, and all thing things I couldn’t have predicted for him came true, and there was a smiling boy on this post instead of an empty space where his happy face should be.

Yeah, I know, its six days into the New Year and I still haven’t done the promised blog here about how this coming year might look. And that’s because I’m still not sure. I was working out of the house between September and November (should have been December but I fell in work and gave myself the most impressive concussion I’ve ever had, therefore finished up a bit early). I’m now back out of work, and looking for a new job because it was only temp and I was good with that.

Plans for my writing

The New year didn’t make it any easier to make plans for what I wanted to do with my writing – to be fair, all I do right now is sleep (still very depressed and tired, even though I’m six weeks post-concussion), and do some work on 750words, but I do have a plan. It does mean I’m going to be secret-squireling for about six months, but that’s ok. It’s not as if it’ll take me away from writing already in the works/complete.
Writing plans are, as always, contingent on what happens with my work, because making an income for my family has to come top of the pile. Even for another year until we get out from under the pile of bills left with me after I finished freelancing and clients refused to pay. I estimate that’ll take until the summer, then we can start saving for our wedding etc. but y’know, hope springs eternal that I’ll find a (well-paid) job that lets me write too.

Plans for other stuff

I know I’ve talked on here about grief and miscarrying, and all of the other stuff that went with that. We’re still no further forward and after another ‘event’ over my birthday, David and I have decided, for now, to call time on the whole trying to get pregnant cycle. It probably doesn’t help that we’re both stressed to the eyeballs over what to do about the youngest, various sick members of both families, living so far away from everyone and basically having no real time to work out or grieve properly, but I really feel like there are parts of my life that need sorted out before I look to the future. It’s not even fixing the past – can’t be done, so I’m just going to get myself to a point where I’m at peace with it, it’s more…having a routine and working and doing stuff that’s good for me instead of what’s good for everyone else. I did it when I sat my degree, and I’m very proud of that, but there are other things I can do too. I just have to find my way out from under the grey clouds first for some of it. My brain isn’t dealing with happiness the way it should, and more than anything, that’s something I need to fix, and it’s all internal.

New books

When all’s said and done, there will be new books this year. I promise. I’m just not sure when. Given the secret squirrel project is taking away half of my time, it’s a bit difficult to say ‘this is what I’m going for’. It’d be nice to have five novels out by the end of the year, time permitting, but I’ll be satisfied if I just get three or four. Again, it’s all down to whether I get a nice job or if I can stay home and PR to cover the bills, and write for the rest of my time. Even shaving down our outgoings and what I pay for, I still need to work about 20 solid hours a week to make anywhere near what I’d need to cover bills, which is why anything extra goes straight to said bills
That said…there’s going to be a weekly ‘state of the writing’ on Author, Interrupted, with pretty pie charts and metrics and other fun stuff ;).

Blog schedule

And finally, the blog schedule. It’ll appear here before the 15th, so you know where I’m writing, when and what for.

Right. First up. If you’re really not interested in ‘the feels’ of things (sorry, bad internet slangy thing), this post probably isn’t for you and I’m totally ok with you skipping it. This DOES NOT contain much about the actual cybercamp itself – more about the stuff I learned about me. It’s most likely not useful to anyone, other than me, but because people were asking me why I was sad, day two, I thought I better get this written up. I’m totally fine with you skipping this one and hitting Steampunkdragonfly (my new cyber/sec/policy blog – though, right this second it’s parked on another blog, just give it a few hours ;)) later today, when the less personal stuff goes up. That’s going to take a good few posts to cover actually – I’ve got screeds and screeds and screeds of notes to get through.

Before I pick up my blog where I left off, HI. Hi to all my new followers and all of my older followers and sorry I’ve been so quiet lately. I think the last post explains my mindset sufficiently, still, but I still wish I’d picked my blog back up sooner.

Secondly. If you’re based in the UK, go check out these guys:The Cyber Security Challenge is one of the brilliant initiatives that I’m betting will lead the charge in plugging the gap between the experts we have and the expertise we need in Cyber Security. And I do want to emphasize that it’s not just ‘techies’ that’ll get a lot out of this. I’m a bit techie (though, not as much as the people I encountered at camp) but where I really apparently shone was policy. So if you’re interested, in the slightest in showcasing or upping your cyber security skills, and networking with like-minded people, get your butts over to the site. They’ve earned a permanent link from all of my blogs, and I’ll explain why in a second. And in all seriousness, thank you. I thought my life was quite nice before I went to the camp – and that I was doing the stuff I really wanted to. That PR was just as good as policy, if you removed the tech, and that it was ok to feel like there was a little missing. Thank you for showing me that, and being patient and kind and making sure I was ok, and paying attention to the little things. Thank you for it being perfect, start to finish. Thank you for bringing us all together. Thank you to the sponsors. Thank you to the staff. Thank you, a million times.

And Third

I’ve been looking for a use for one of the new blogs I was going to start – two actually, but the main one I was struggling with was ‘Steampunkdragonfly’. Originally it was going to be my amalgamation site, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I really should just be doing that on Dkaiwilsonviola.
And then this Wednesday hit and my world got shoved sidewards off a cliff, flipped upside down and well…from there…I dunno. I’m still trying to process.

Let me explain….

Wednesday, I went to the Cyber Security Challenge at Shrivenham from Wednesday evening until Sunday. And I’ll be honest, I thought I’d be a bit of a spare part there – I’d learn some stuff but that no one would even notice me. Got that one wrong!
I arrived, got my stuff dumped and was pretty much approached straight away by four lads, who wanted to know *everything* about me. I had waited until they’d talked and then told them a tiny bit about myself. I was gobsmacked at how interested everyone was in me. Met two of the girls, confessed to being out of my depth (and in a freaking dress….I mean, that alone is like weddings only) and grabbed a drink. We all went for food and then the ‘getting to know you’ session started.
It was hilarious. I’ll be doing a proper write-up on the bits I can, and the stuff I personally got from it on said new blog, but I have to say something about the personal stuff that went on while I was there.

I don’t think it’s unfair to say that I struggle with the ‘social’ aspect of the world outside. I understand *everything* out there in theory, but in practice, I’m about three seconds away from bolting when I do something new. And when you’re planning your escape in the next ten seconds, constantly, there really isn’t much room for anything else. And it makes me very tense, and quite excitable, because that ‘bleeds’ through into my voice and then I say something stupid and everything just….yeah.
I’m not so much an introvert as someone that should live inside the space an introvert takes up when they’re really scared and need time to themselves. you know, that tiny cupboard? That’d be a good place for me. I’m an introvert’s introvert. Mostly because I have severe anxiety.
And it makes me *incredibly* lonely. Which is the weird part. Introverts aren’t meant to get lonely, right? But I do. I’m intensely lonely, to the point of making an idiot of myself cause I’m excited someone other than my other half or my very small circle of friends are talking to me in person/online.
Cybercamp – a bit like the best environment I could have designed….

What happens when you take 20 reasonably young people (*with a few notable exceptions, myself included), mix in a heaping spoonful of a really neat scenario (which was made public, so I can talk about that bit) where some tankers have struck something and they’re not sure of why etc. and it could be security related or coincidence. And that’s where we were chucked in.
FOUR DAYS of intense, hands on fun later and I’m dizzy. I learned about SQL injections, I learned about changing stuff browser side. I learned why hidden HTML fields are going to get you reamed, if you’re not careful.
But I learned that actually, I’m quite level headed and can keep most of my anxiety under control. I learned it’s ok to go off and have a cry, because I’m just not keeping up, but I didn’t need to make a fuss about it. I learned it’s ok to be afraid because a lot of the others there too were too. What’s not ok was letting it win, cause I’d have been the one losing out. And I can get up in front of people and do a presentation without having a panic attack afterwards. I got top three on day three and I learned that I did that way out of my own expectations and I did it because the teams I was on – throughout the whole challenge (and we swapped teams throughout the stay) – were absolutely amazing. I mean, top notch. So it wasn’t really me that did it all – it was all of us.
And I made friends. Lots of em. Heaps of em.
Hi guys

One of the things I did say that caused a bit of worry though was how disheartened I was after one of the challenges. I’m going to specifically explain that one in a seperate post – but it was disheartened at how easily I fell into tunnel vision and looked only at tech rather than the hollistic whole. And everything they flagged had been something I’d thought of and we’d missed it because I was so intent on ‘keeping up’ with the boys – not because it was a competition, but because I didn’t want to be their single point of failure. In fact, I should have been the ‘failure’ there, so i could then drop into the bigger picture stuff. That was my own fault for not communicating effectively and not taking the time to do the ‘personal’ bit that I ususally do. I’m USUALLY the loon in most games that explores everything before moviung on – not because I’m indecisive but because RTFM or ‘TTFP’ (talk to fucking people!) is about the rule of thumb I have – I don’t go all on interrogate, but I didn’t pay attention to that and I disappointed myself. But, I learned from that and we did stellarly in day 3.
Oh yeah, and I clearly have NO situational awareness. I wasn’t aware that we were in a tent in the middle of the desert on an island for one challenge, though it was emphasized. I just saw the back wall as a partition and darted around it, not considering what it actually meant. For someone who’s supposed to be hyper aware of her surroundings, that was a bit of a fail – but on the other hand, it really highlighted how safe and how comfortable I was in the environment, and how much I trusted, not just the team members (who at one point had me sandwiched between them while messing with a server box (one on each side, really close quarters)) and though I was a bit aware and kept having to calmly say ‘please don’t touch me’ it was all good. That’s something I need to work on – one lad that went to pull me over so I was closer and up on a chair next to him (tight skirt, very tired, not getting the hang of hopping up onto the barstool) looked genuinely offended when I said ‘don’t touch me’, and I very nearly dashed out of the room because I’d hurt his feelings.

My next blog post, coming in about two hours (A bit of housekeeping) is to answer some of the questions I’ve been asked lately about ‘where do you write, where are your books, how do I follow you). Skip that one too if you want.
Otherwise, Day (x) blow by blow will appear on Steampunkdragonfly in the next 24 hours or so, starting with Day 0.

First up. the rumors of my demise are greatly overstated. I had a bit of a hospital adventure, which I’ll explain later in the post, but I’m not too bad. Photo proof too, aren’t you lucky

I’ve been getting really good at procrastinating.
Oh, I’ll tell myself it’s because there’s only so much I can do in a day, and I do achieve something…but.
Normally, but works in my favor It’s what I say to justify falling behind on my own work. It’s what I say to comfort myself when there’s nothing else to say. But…
I mean – client work is getting done. Edits are flowing in and out. I’m doing PR and my articles. But sometimes, the articles don’t get posted. A week passes and i loom at stuff and think ‘i should have done that, how in the heck did I miss my OWN deadline?’ Sometimes, I forget to stop at 9 and keep working through, and frequently I have to do twitter from my phone between other jobs.
I haven’t knitted since the middle of last month. I’m devouring books in the wee hours of the morning cause there’s no other time to read. Let alone write.
My sleep sucks. My blogs are neglected (I had articles for d-z, but I didn’t post them. I will though), and I’m sad, lonely and just not coping.
And through it all, I keep telling myself, ‘tomorrow will be different’. Tomorrow.
Not today.
Today is full of knowing my womb is empty, and not dealing with miscarrying. Today is studiously avoiding having too long to think, because then the litany of self-loathing in my head gets to be too much to bear. Today is waking up and checking my phone to see what’s happened this time and is full of missed things, and dropped responsibilities – agreeing to stuff when I should say no. Laundry that seems endless, even though we bought a new machine. Moderating because people just don’t ‘get’ it. Millions and millions of screams and sobs, suppressed because if I start, I’ll never stop.
Waking up and my first thought being ‘I wonder what fresh hell today holds’. Except, it’s not a fresh hell – it’s stale, moldy leftover hell. It’s one where I tell myself how worthless I am. Because I am.
It’s trying to be brave, because its been a bad week/month/year. It’s two new kittens, but constantly worrying – if they don’t eat, cry when walking, blink or sneeze, we panic. Its missing Kush like crazy, but having two cuties who make me smile, but I feel so guilty. It’s having friends, but being too scared to talk to them because, really, what right do I have to tell then about my life when I’m (mostly) healthy, I’m not in a position where I’m destitute. I’m loved and/or respected by people (though I will never understand why). I’m not dealing with organ failure, or health insurance, or sick husbands, or anything else. It’s wanting just one day where I don’t have to be strong.
And it’s a similar refrain, but trying to have a baby for nearly two years and being met with nothing but later and later, heavier cycles, failing to manage the one thing I should be able to do, and doesn’t depend on money, or work, or writing or even anyone other than me and him hurts. It hurts that we can’t get pregnant. It hurts that infertility is something else on our list of things. It hurts that, instead of a new baby at home, all I have is emptiness. And it’s hard, cause I feel as if there’s no-one to talk to. Even though I have a few really good friends that have told me to talk to them about anything.
I always said that I couldn’t make this sort of thing public – then, on Thursday I landed in hospital. For one reason and another, it had been a horrible week, and after talking to my other half, we went out for food.
On the way, my shoulder started hurting. Soon after eating, I started to feel horribly sick. And was violently and repeatedly sick. When I came home and posted my ‘woe is me’ on Facebook, mentioning the pain in my jaw, neck and shoulder, I was urged to call a doctor, who called a paramedic, who radioed for an ambulance.
They took me to the ER, where the commentary was basically ‘this could have been a cardiac event. We need bloods, to make you comfy, and you’ll stay.’ So I did.
And I read. I read like I’d never read in a LONG time – mostly because I’d forgotten my bipolar meds and the worst side effect of them is skipping a dose = only capable of dozing. And I read. And I had a think.
One of the things I thought through was why I put off my own writing in favor of *anything else*. I think that’s a whole post unto itself to be honest. Then I thought about what I am. Again, another post because I mostly define myself by what I can’t do/haven’t achieved. I thought about something very specific someone said in public then threw in my face in private, and what the fallout from that was. On that, I came to the conclusion that I can’t do anything. Not yet anyway.
I read. The whole of the second book of The Hunger Games (Catching Fire) and talked to nurses about books and indies and life.
I was in hospital a total of around 13 hours. I slept for 1. So I got home, was fed, and slept. And I thought some more.
I have no solution to the empty feeling inside me right now. I have no immediate solution to one of the things thrown in my face either, though on that, the person was wrong. But tomorrow is going to be here soon, and I don’t want to keep looking to it to find the better things. I want to find more of them now – it’s better for me that way.
Oh, that photo? That’s me, tonight, in bed, smiling cause I get told off if I don’t. It’s not a common expression right now, but I’m sure that if I turn tomorrow to today, it’ll find me again. I hope.

I bet everyone can tell what this post is going to be about.
Yep.
Cats!

I love my cats. We recently lost my adorable girl, so after we got everything cleaned (she had a permanent URI) and grieved, we adopted the girls.
The grey girl in the photos is Haley, the little mountaineer, Eiryss.
Both are nine months old – Haley’s fairly placid, Eiryss quite skittish, but they’re settling in really well.

Well…B is for a lot of things actually. I’ll be doing ‘B is for Books’ over at AlexandriaPublishingGroup later today, but for now I wanted to touch on the books, and some other stuff that B is for.

In our house, B is for something we just can’t have yet. Not because we can’t afford it, or because we don’t want one – in fact, as long as I remain fairly successful as a freelancer, money really isn’t a problem, neither will be taking maternity leave.
And there, with that one word, you’ll know that I’m talking about babies. I’ll be doing a full post on it in ‘I is for infertility’, but I prefer the sound of babies to ‘infertility’, so there you go.

As I’m talking about this on my mostly personal blog, I’m going to say only this – it’s been one of the toughest things I’ve had to deal with in our relationship, so when Kushka died earlier last month, I think it just all got to me – not that I’d have grieved less if we’d had a baby – but she WAS our baby in many ways. And yep, we’ve got a pair of kitten(ish) cats now, who are slowly settling right in, but I’d still give anything to have my girl back. Even though I love the two new ones, Kush really was one in a billion.
But, we move on. Humans perceive time in odd ways – and I still cry looking at the photos, but there’s two new bundles of fun to snuggle, and I’m sure, given how spoiled and loved they are, adding a baby to that mix, if we ever manage it is going to be fine.

So, I can’t have babies right now – it’s not the end of the world, right? Well, no, actually in some ways it really is. I feel like a failure – not that we can’t conceive (oh, look, c is for knocked up), but because we can. My body just has a conniption, gives me all of the fun stuff that early pregnancy has – exhaustion, nausea, throwing up, peeing like there’s no tomorrow, then, after about a week, if I’m lucky, I lose it.
If that weren’t traumatic enough, it’s my other half’s first baby. I have two children from a previous relationship, but wouldn’t you know, I’ve been in this one for nine years (twice as long as my relationship with the father of my children).

And also for…

B is also for Iain Banks - he and Dan Abbnett told me (separately, but in the same month) that if I didn’t write, it would be a crime, or sentiments to that effect – having lost several greats this year already (James Herbert, Dave Silva and Rick Hautala) I’m really beginning to feel like I should be publishing, and be dammed with the rest of the stuff that occupies my life. I was 17 when they told me, half a lifetime ago.

B is for Bah.

B is for bombtastic

Bit of a spoiler here, sorry guys, but after Glass Block launches (I hope on Friday), there will be some A-Z challenge posts appearing on DarknessPD. Items like E is for Elliot, M is for Morrigan, C is for Clones and B is for…well….bomb blasts.

Ain’t I a stinker?

B is for Blogging

I’ve been asked what it is about me and blogs. I guess I’m not very good at explaining that, but I love keeping blogs. I mean…almost as much as I love reading and writing. I’m trying to rework my blogs though, so that they’re more regularly updated – alongside B is for Blogs, be is also for Bi-polarbears, the mental health advocate site I run which was 10 last month.

And finally….

B is for Books. I love books. Almost as much as I love my cats. I’m an avid reader – I’ve got a lovely Kindle, and an Ipad so I can read no matter what, and it’s something I really miss. I was going to start a film review blog later in the month, but i may add recommended book reviews to that too. Not that I’ll review books, but that I’ll recommend books with a review, on my terms :).